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Adopting an agile methodology is what everyone wants to do. Agile companies can increase productivity, shorten the delivery cycle and still improve quality. No wonder everyone is in the race for agile transformation.

 

However, for many this is a big challenge that involves several redesigns. When the company works in a traditional way, the path to agile transformation is a little longer, including:

• new values
• differentiated mindset
• new tools 
• change of attitude and interaction with the world

In other words, a total renewal of the company’s organizational culture.

 

Because of this, the agile transformation needs to be planned and executed by experienced professionals, covering several areas of the organization. Having the mission, with a cross-functional team, of optimizing the value chain in order to fulfill the wishes and needs of customers in truly effective solutions.

But is your business transforming properly? Is your company really agile?

 

Agile Transformation

Agile Transformation is driving Digital Transformation. In the world of Digital Transformation, companies break down barriers with innovative products that fulfill desires that customers didn’t know they had. The products and services are made-to-measure adding value to the business.

In a world of change, it’s important to stay ahead. Stimulating knowledge, improving processes, giving visibility to people, that is, delivering solutions that will add value, this is the concept of agile transformation.

In short, the purpose of using agile concepts is to simplify the way projects are executed so that they have an increasingly positive end result.

While the more traditional models use long processes with defined objectives, in the agile methods, a proposal of shorter processes is used, with deliveries in less time that focus on improvement and in team alignment. Making the identification of faults easier and generating greater flexibility in the work methodology.

When we talk about agile transformation, we are talking about 4 pillars:

1. communication — individuals and interactions more than processes and tools;
2. pragmatism — product working more than comprehensive documentation;
3. collaboration — collaboration with the client more than contract negotiation;
4. adaptability — responding to change rather than following a plan.

 

But should agile transformation be part of your company or is it just for the IT area?

 

Agile transformation is just for IT?

When you’re running a business, it’s important to embrace risk. It is not something that is done automatically, but it is a very necessary practice in the transformation journey towards a new way of managing a business using more and more digital and integrated technologies.

Agile methodologies will help your business overcome operational, planning barriers by adopting a more flexible, change-able approach.

Businesses need to take the first step, start seeing the benefits of transforming and stop hiding behind those who say agile transformation is just for IT. Everyone can benefit and change the history of their areas.

 

Agile maturity stages

To help a company understand where it is at a stage of agile maturity, we use our own concept, the 4P’s:

• Processes: how are the internal processes
• Products: how are the products created
• Practices: how are the practices and tools used
• People: how are the people in this organization.

 

Analyzing these 4 P’s it is possible to identify which stage of maturity your company is in and see which points are needed to improve:

0. Traditional Company

It’s that company where some contributor has heard about agile transformation, read a book on the subject (like the “The art of doing twice the work in half the time”, by Jeff Sutherland) and realized that this was necessary for him and, at this point, he seeks a consultancy to help with the transformation.< /span>

 

1. Agile Mechanical

Most organizations are at this point, where they know the concept, they do parts of the agile transformation but not the entire process.

At this stage, normally, the company already uses kanban, post-its, and organizational methods, but it is not enough to be considered agile, since there is still a lot of plastered process .

Flaws are often frowned upon and therefore it is not a transparent organization with clear objectives.

 

Analyzing the 4P’s of the agile mechanic:

Processes: unscaled, no metrics, value stream… 

Product: Has no product vision, doesn’t usually know the customer well.

Practice: no agile quality, agile engineering.

People: still have traditional culture.

With consulting, training and a good squad it’s easy to elevate from this level to the level of agile professional.

 

2. Practicing Agile

The company that is at the “practicing agile” level is right in the middle of the road. It has already overcome most of the malfunctions of the agile mechanic but has not yet reached the continuous stream of value of the “agile professional”. It is a time where processes still need to be improved, people need to develop their skills, knowledge and experience. With the help of experts, meaning people more experienced in the journey, it’s easier to go through this stage and go to the next level.

 

3. Professional Agile

Here is what we all wanted from the start. When we talk about the benefits of agility, they can all be reaped at this stage. Both the team and the leadership understood the importance of clear goals and alignment in execution.

Decentralization happens, teams are empowered to make decisions (but of course, with restriction). Innovations encompass all areas, as everyone is free to adapt.

Employees and customers, that is, people are at the center of everything. Value is continuously generated as motivated employees produce user-focused solutions.

Agile leadership sets goals, knows the customer, promotes value delivery, removes impediments, knows how to support and develop team members.

This makes everything in the company run fast and, in fact, agile.

“When you have an agile and clear process, with well-defined rules, any project can be more successful.”

 

Agile Methods

Now that you know what agile transformation is and have identified what maturity level your company is at, let’s understand a little more about agile methods, how they work and of course, how to apply them.

 

Scrum

It is one of the but to use agile methods in projects. Its main objective is to assist in the management and development of products, fitting in very well in medium and long term projects.

As it is one of the most popular methods, it is often confused with the very concept of agile methodology.

To put it into practice, it is necessary to know all the positives and negatives of your team, and define for each employee the role and function.

In Scrum, there are new roles such as the Product Owner who defines the Backlog of things the team must do, as well as defining what is value for delivery, the Scrum Master who has the objective of helping the team in the delivery, and ensures that agile concepts are being applied and there is also the Development Team, which are people from different areas, with different skills, who make value deliveries. This team will deliver higher value and faster, generating innovative solutions and increasing the competitive advantage for the area or company.

The Scrum method is very important for projects with high complexity and delivery urgency. For this, cycles known as Sprints are created, which are nothing more than time intervals for the development of pieces of the solution. It all starts with planning what will be done in that cycle, followed by the development stage. At the end of each sprint there is a review of what we have done and a retrospective for improvement as a whole. This runs the product development cycles in Scrum.

 

eXtreme Programming (XP)

XP, together with Scrum, is one of the first agile methods and is intended to improve software quality and responsiveness to changes in what is generated for the client. This method advocates frequent deliveries in short development cycles, with the goal of improving productivity and introducing checkpoints at which new customer requirements can be adopted.

Other XP elements include: pair programming, code review, unit testing, emerging architecture, code simplicity and clarity, changing customer requirements over time, and frequent customer communication with the development team. The methodology bears in its name the idea that the beneficial elements of traditional software engineering practices should be taken to “extreme” levels.

 

Kanban

It is one of the newest and simplest agile methods to use. It consists of visual and practical elements to promote the flow of activities.

Kanban has gained a prominent position and can be a way to perform project management in a super adaptable way.

The main idea of ​​kanban is to seek evolution, allowing the organization of processes to be done in a visual way. In its simplest form, you need to assemble a frame and divide it as follows:

• To Do — activities that need to be performed;
• Doing — activities being performed;
• Done — activities that have already been completed, evaluated and approved by the team.

 

Just as important as creating this to-do list is the flow management being done constantly by the team. Metrics such as number of tasks and execution time are common to be monitored in teams that use kanban.

 

How to do the agile transformation

Implementing the agile transformation is not just about starting to use Kanban, Scrum and the other methods. You need to do a thorough analysis of your company in order to identify the positives and negatives of the process as a whole.

To carry out this analysis, the most used method is the SWOT analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats), in Portuguese, SWOT (Strength, Opportunity, Weakness, Threats) . But what is this analysis for?

The purpose of the SWOT analysis is to draw a strategic plan for companies or new projects, carrying out a complete diagnosis that will identify opportunities for improvement and define action plans.

 

Process improvement

Agile transformation affects the entire company, it matters to analyze and see what the organization’s internal problems are, where the bottlenecks are and where the projects tend to fail. After all, this is the ultimate goal of agile transformation: to seek solutions.

 

Exchange of knowledge

In order to improve processes, it is necessary to encourage a culture of knowledge. Qualify your team and encourage the sharing of knowledge and communication.

For this, it is very important to always respect the differences and individualities of each person so that no space is invaded and can generate discomfort.

 

Communication

As stated above, it is important to improve internal communication.

Debating problems, finding solutions, qualifying, putting changes into practice, it’s all agile transformation being applied truthfully and correctly.

When there is a lack of internal information, the team is, in most cases, disunited and focused on the final product, and not on the process, so it is very difficult to see the problems.< /span>

 

Inside-out transformation

When you want to transform a company, you need to work in-house first. It’s something that takes work and patience, but gives great results in the end.

Some points for agile transformation to happen:

• Encourage short cycles with measurable deliveries;
• Promote effective communication between everyone involved in the development and delivery of the service or product;</li >
• Give visibility to team problems and actions;
• Deliver solutions with business value;
• Encourage the exchange of experience in the team, seeking a culture of learning and continuous improvement.

 

By setting small goals and fulfilling them, agile transformation takes place fully and in accordance with the organization’s values. You don’t have to want to change an entire company all of a sudden, it’s small steps that are taken towards transformation.

 

Use Agile to Deploy Agile

Deploying agility in an area or company so that it reaches high maturity is very complex. Therefore, this project itself must be done in an agile way. This is how we at Agile.Inc minimize risk and increase the chance of success, in your real transformation, so that it doesn’t just stop at level 1.

 

Scrum Day Brazil

If you’re still unsure how Agile Transformation works and how it works for you, we talked about it at Scrum Day Brazil 2020 and you can watch everything that happened there by clicking here.

Scrum Day Brazil 2021 has a date and tickets are now on sale at special prices, get yours hereand participate!

Learn the best solution for the scenario you are in and achieve the real benefits of being agile

By Antonio Costa Having more performance, more productivity and being more agile is one of the main goals of many people today, in any area, isn’t it? You know that you need to work differently, you want to have deliveries that really serve the customer and achieve the organization’s goals in the best possible way… But the point is: in order to get there, do you need consulting support? Do I need to train my team, and in which trainings? How do I put together this puzzle between training, consulting or hiring? And our answer is: it depends a lot on the stage you are in! In some moments it is possible to do some training and learn techniques and ways to solve these challenges. In others, it is necessary to have the support of an outside expert to help incorporate and put all this teaching into practice. To help you understand better, I’ll suggest below some very common scenarios for you to try to identify yourself in a situation and understand what step you’re in and how Agility can help you, either with training or consulting. Check out:

1 – “I still don’t know about agile methods, I just heard about it.”

If you hear a lot about Agility but don’t understand it very well, there are some literatures that can help you, such as: “The art of doing double the work in half the time“, by Jeff Sutherland and “Scrum and XP straight from the Trenches by Henrik Kniberg. These two books are indispensable for anyone starting out in this universe! Now, if you need richer material, and have the support of a person who will teach you in practice, answering more specific questions, training such as Professional Scrum Foundations will give you this quick and applicable knowledge, plus you’ll earn a voucher to take the official Scrum.org PSMI exam.

2 – “I researched it, I know a little bit, but I have doubts if it works in my reality.”

If agile methods and concepts are no longer a pain in the ass, but you still find it difficult to incorporate them into your daily life, you can unlock this opportunity with the help of an experienced professional. This is quite common to happen and can be easily resolved with a quick diagnosis. Get in touch with us, we’ve scheduled a free meeting to make this diagnosis. Another way to find out if it applies in your reality is to watch this video – we explain how to implement agile principles in any team, whether in the Marketing, Human Resources, Finance, Legal, Operations areas, among others, especially outside IT. Click here and watch!

3 – “I’ve read a lot, but I don’t know if I’m applying it in the best way.”

Have you reorganized your team to use Scrum and other agile concepts, read some books and learned some dynamics, but still realize that this hasn’t been the best way or that you have things to improve to make the team more effective? Calm down that you can improve and adjust the method much more to your daily life. It is ideal to seek this knowledge empirically, learning and improving daily, but if you need to accelerate this process to get better results, my tip is to invest in practical knowledge. And this can happen in two ways: with a Fundamentals course with practical and advanced techniques for your company, to train a group of people through trainings in company. Or have the support of a specialized consultancy to increase the agile maturity of those involved. discover the best way to implement agile methods in your day to day, having visible benefits in the short term.

4 – “I want to learn more, but I have limited money.”

Okay, if the moment is not appropriate for a large investment in training people within your company, there are several options for individual training that can be done according to each person’s area of ​​expertise. This is the time to choose some people from your team, or yourself, and seek their professionalization. In addition to the Scrum Foundations course – essential for anyone starting out in Agility, you can go a step further and specialize by taking the Product Owner or Scrum Master, for example, and replicate all this knowledge internally in your organization. If you are a leader in your organization, the PAL-E is a great way to learn more about how to make teams more agile.

5 – “I know I can have benefits and that it applies in my reality, but I don’t know which ones, I don’t even know how…”

At this stage, in order to have these results more quickly and assertively, it is essential to bet on a good diagnosis in order to have a solution focused on your reality. For these new concepts to truly generate value, they must be deeply, professionally and customized to your needs. Don’t run the risk of deploying Agility in your area mechanically! In a free diagnosis and just 2 hours, we can help you understand the best agile process for your team to have more results and more productivity.

Click here and get your quick diagnosis < /a>

6 – “I’ve tried using the practices, but I feel I still do wrong things and so I don’t get all the benefits.”

If this is your current challenge, it is important to have key people to qualify and provide training according to their area of ​​expertise and take this knowledge to other layers of the company, such as leaders, managers and directors, so that the impact of this new knowledge be much larger and provide more results in several areas.

Learn about Scrum training Master, Agile Leadership Essentials</ em> and Scaled Professional Scrum</a >.

But, if it’s still difficult for you to see how these methods help you to be more agile, have more productivity and better deliveries, look for a consultancy that will help you identify the best practices for your reality and remove ties from the system that you own today.

7 – “I already do a lot of agile practices, but I feel that my company still has ties…”

That’s it! If you can already identify the impediments that hinder team performance and deliverables, but still cannot remove them, you need to work on the culture, practices, product and people, so that the whole mindset be transformed, be really agile.

Understand how our Enterprise Consulting works</ a>

8 – “I have professionals who still need to evolve in their areas of expertise.”

Without a doubt, in this situation it is necessary to train! It is very common to see in the market, several immature Scrum Masters and/or Product Owners, acting mechanically and who needlearn the real agile. If this is the scenario you find yourself in, empowerment is the best choice. Check out the official Scrum.org trainings in Brazil and see what best fits your role and day-to-day.

But what is the best solution?

If your pain is not one of the ones described above or if you are still in doubt about this whole process, please send us send a message, we will be happy to help you. It is noteworthy that the financial factor is also decisive in these choices… And investing a little more – whether in training or consulting – helps you to have the real benefits in the short term, with much more chances of success. If you’ve found you need training – beware of courses that teach you only the basics. Learn directly from those who work with creators and learn the true agile. If your case needs consulting support, we can chat about how to help you in this process! In a macro way, you can invest in individual training, in company training, have a quick diagnosis to understand more, have a more in-depth diagnosis to know how it will be applied in your case, or already have support of the consultancy on this journey. These are the tools you can use to support you on your agile journey. Putting this puzzle together is complex and difficult… But the right things, in the right places, make you win the game more and reach a high agile maturity and a new mindset. Read too:

https://old.agile.whit.digital/how-ageis-methodologies-may-organize-work-processes/

Learn with the dynamic “Why Agile” to understand the real reasons why you want to be more agile and extract the maximum benefits from this process 

By Antonio Costa

One of the techniques that we learn from Scrum.org and apply in every consulting process we do is “ Why Agile?”. This practice is the starting point of our work within an organization and you can also apply it in your day-to-day to be more successful in agile transformation. But why the answer to “Why Agile?” is that important? Because if you don’t clearly define why you’re looking for Agility for your business; if you don’t establish what the expected benefits of this initiative are, the big chance is that this work will be done only by the method and not by the results. So when we start an agile transformation process within an organization, we do a series of dynamics and this involves several steps, bringing together several stakeholders to understand the “why agile?”. At first, there is no consensus, nor much clarity of the reason, and these are one of the dynamics that help us to build this, consolidating and landing…

Five common reasons for those seeking Agility

Among the many answers we hear when we apply this dynamic of “Why Agile?”, in this text, I want to introduce you to the five most common and that can help you to be more successful in the agile transformation. Check out: “Because the market is doing this, so are other companies and I need to do it.” The “why it’s fashionable” is one of the answers we hear most when asking why you want to implement Agility in an organization. Maybe that’s not the answer we like to hear the most, but, without judgment, it’s a pretty common reason. “Because I want to be more agile.” Okay, but what is being more agile for you? This is another common response, but one in which many people don’t have a clear definition of “being more agile”. To better understand this scenario, we do a coaching process to understand the real reason behind this answer. Is being more agile to deliver more value? Is it delivering more tasks in less time? Is it to have more productivity? With these feedbacks, it is possible to better define what Agility is for that organization and for that group of leaders. Most people want to be more agile to be more productive and deliver more value. “Because I want to have better deliveries.” It is common to hear that teams work too much, work overtime, have a super exhausting routine and some even end up leaving the company. This has a huge impact on deliveries, which could be better and with less suffering. Therefore, they want to implement Agility to have a more fluid routine and deliver more quality. “With the agility I will be able to better govern teams and projects.” In many companies, the main reason Agility is being pursued is to have more transparency, more visibility, remove the impediments and be able to help unlock people’s potential and make things flow better. “I want to mitigate the risks in my area.” Finally, this is also a very common response… Many leaders want to be more agile to take control of risk. Likewise, they want to have shorter deliveries, they need a clearer definition of the product objective and good interaction between the stakeholders. These are the main reasons we see in our daily lives why companies seek agile transformation. In short, when you clearly define what it ispoint B, that is, the place where you want to go and what you expect results, it is much easier to trace the path to get there.

“If you are not clear where you want to go, any path will do.”

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lTVQ6y_wnXI&feature=youtu.be

 

Replicate this technique in your process

I hope this technique can help you start your agile transformation process. If you want a little more details about this dynamic, how we do it and how long it takes, or something related, send a message here for us! Having this answer is very important to help you not only to have a clear purpose when implementing agility in your organization, but to reach another level of productivity and get the maximum benefits from this process, in a much simpler way. Now, if you want to apply this technique in your area to really know your objective with agile – and thereby shorten the path to transformation, we provide expert advice that will help you successfully make the agile transformation, getting more value with less pain.   Read too:

https://old.agile.whit.digital/how-ageis-methodologies-may-organize-work-processes/

https://old.agile.whit.digital/7-major-erros-em-um-process-de-transformacao-agil/

   

Understand how these failures are hindering your company’s results during the Agile Transformation process

By Antonio Costa

Many companies want to make the agile transformation so that they can better organize their teams, in order to deliver more value and ensure more competitive advantage for the organization. However, throughout this movement of change, as we went through several companies with our consulting or assembles squads, we have identified some very common behaviors. And we’ve resolved to bundle these top mistakes during an agile transformation, which are holding companies back from achieving results and getting the most benefit out of this process. Check out:

No short deliveries

Both in the transformation process (we perform the Agile Transformation process, in an Agile / incremental way – click here and learn more), as well as in the day-to-day of the teams that work in the development of the Product, it is essential to have short films delivered in order to be really agile. It is these deliveries, made with correct slicing and prioritization, that promote the inspection and adaptation mechanism – one of the main pillars of agility.

Think only about process and forget about Engineering

Another typical mistake we see within companies undergoing an agile transformation is to focus too much on the process and leave software engineering behind. To extract the maximum benefits from this journey of change, you need to pay attention to the quality of your engineering. One of the items of the Agile Manifesto is precisely having a good software architecture and an adequate design to enable teams to have more shorter deliveries that can make Agility concepts be well used within the teams routine.

Do the mechanic and think it’s okay

Another failure that happens a lot is to think that the concepts and pillars of the Agile or Digital Transformation are just more processes and not giving the correct depth they have. It is not possible to have a traditional mindset (waterfall), using only some techniques or mechanical processes of the agile frameworks and achieving the estimated results. It takes a real mindset change! Do you really want to change your organization’s mindset and have more engaged teams with more productivity? Click here and schedule a conversation with us.

Climbing too early

Still talking about depth, if you haven’t managed to make this transformation in a small cell within your company yet, don’t start scaling this initiative to the entire organization. This process of transformation, whether agile or digital, is based on a cultural change, a turning point in people’s thinking… And this change calls for the correct training to be carried out, the breaking of ties that exist in the daily lives of teams – that make them not have the necessary performance, among other characteristics, which take time to be modified. So it’s important to know the right time to start climbing!

Don’t measure and learn during transformation

The fifth mistake we most identify in companies during the agile transformation is not measuring and not learning along this process. Deliveries are being short, software engineering is getting the right attention, you’re putting agile principles into practice in the right way, you’re scaling at the right time, but do you have indicators for all of this? You need to be data driven and use the data to measure theWhat’s happening. This will help you know if you are really delivering more value to the organization with these initiatives. Is the teams’ productivity higher? Is the number of impediments decreasing? Is lead time decreasing? Are users and customers satisfied with the product? These are some questions that need answers, data and analysis to help you measure and learn from this transformation process.

Low product and customer focus

When we talk about agile transformation, we have three main pillars: processes and/or management, engineering and product/customer. When you don’t focus properly on the product and the customer, you don’t have, for example, prioritization techniques and you don’t know what is really value and what is success for a project. You can work with any method, but if you don’t give proper attention to the product and its user, you are probably generating a lot of waste in developing this business. Read more: You seem agile, but not focused on the Customer? You’re probably losing the game!

Finding that Agile is an end and not a means

The seventh mistake we see most in agile transformation processes practically consolidates all the previous failures, which is to think that Agile is an end and not a means. This is very common! During our consultations, we hear a lot of people say that they want to be more agile, they want to implement the Spotify model, etc… But what organizations should want is not these formats, but:

• Get more results
• Doing more with less
• Increase Efficiency and Effectiveness
• Competitive advantage
• Making the technology area a protagonist within the organization
• Delivering more value to the business

And, to achieve the above goals, Agility comes as a means! If for this you need to use other principles and concepts other than Agile, that’s fine. The important thing in this transformation initiative is to achieve the goals, that’s the end. If you have identified some of these errors in your daily life and want to correct them, contact us. We can make this diagnosis in your company and help you to have more results!

https://old.agile.whit.digital/por-que-os-processes-ageis-no-are-helping-in-digital-transformation/

Understand how it is possible to have more productivity and effective deliveries in any area of ​​your company and make them more agile

Can I apply agility in any area of ​​the company? The answer is YES, but it depends on a few points. Being agile today is no longer a feature of IT or Digital Products. Large organizations have several projects in all departments, which seek: – Anticipation of the RoI – Innovate more – Improve existing processes – Better meet the needs and objectives of the area Projects today are surrounded by complexity and we can’t predict in advance everything we need to do to achieve our goals, nor how to make teams produce and communicate more. The problem is not often with the professional – you have good people who work a lot (sometimes not so much), but, in the end, there is the feeling that something is stuck and that they have not been able to deliver what is necessary for the company.< /p> Traditional management models through focused micromanagement people efficiency/productivity increasingly demand more and the results go nowhere. In addition to the financial losses, this scenario directly impacts the team’s productivity and morale and this generates frustration for everyone involved.

Have you ever found yourself in this situation? If so, stay calm. There is indeed a light at the end of the tunnel.

We can rely on the scientific method for this and promote agility in any area of ​​the company. By using an empirical process, we are able, through short cycles, to validate a hypothesis, learn from the feedbacks and adapt the plan if necessary.

See how Agility was adopted at Roche

When we talk about agility in any area of ​​the company, we are actually talking about organizations that learn! The first step is to provide transparency! We make it very clear:

• which are objectives;
• the flaws;
• the action plan;
• the next deliverables.

With transparency, we start short inspection and adaptation cycles. This builds trust among all involved and paves the way for continuous improvement.

We often have a very good team, but without the tools to deliver more.

Agility provides the tools to support these teams to shine. Problems increasingly become visible and actions are taken to improve this.

In many cases we have problems with lack of focus, each person on the team has different goals, and in periods of close cycle each one starts looking exclusively at their goal and leaves the team in the background. Through the Transparency, Inspection and Adaptation cycles we are able to understand what is happening and make the necessary adaptations Often the organization itself creates these barriers that prevent the team from focusing on generating value. On one of the projects I went through one of the directors said: “No one in this company imagined we could do all of this in three months!” In this case it was a CRM initiative, no there were software developers, in the mamost were people from business areas such as marketing and sales. The team had to learn to say no, we helped them set a clear, short-term goal and the whole team worked focused on that goal. And you know the coolest thing about all this? The team worked at a sustainable pace, without the need for overtime. Want to understand more about how this process works and how we can help you become an agile organization? Click here and get in touch! We would be delighted to share more details in a chat. A hug!